Content like this is why I love your channel. It’s all great, but it’s so much fun for me to watch a true baseball and card collecting fan talking about the hobby and their love for it, without any ulterior motive of any kind.
Awesome! You truly have chosen the right career path. Few find something they love when they’re young and can progress at it throughout their life. Young Chris would probably be very happy to see how ‘old’ Chris turned out.
Fred Manrique still feeling that burn. I started collected Jeff Bagwell cards when he was a rookie and then I continued with the goal of getting every card. That was until 94 (or 95?) when I was in college and got a copy of Beckett and realized just how many inserts/sets there were. And then I stopped. Also, nice binder full of 1/1s in the beginning. And your baseball photos unlocked a core memory of just high tall they kept the grass in my Little League. Infield really ate up the ground balls.
I had to pause and read the whole thing myself. I could hear your squealing voice as I read it. The sassy "NOT" part gave me a good laugh. Your writing style is still much the same. Good stuff Chris! My mom kept a report I did on Rickey Henderson back in the early 90's. Green and yellow construction paper with magazine cutouts and why he was my favorite player. It's fun to look back at those old memories.
The first big dollar insert I remember were the 1991 Donruss Elite cards. I remember them being almost impossible to find, though. 1991 Fleer Pro-Visions were also cool and much more affordable.
Good reminder about the dangers and joys of nostalgia. It is never true that things were better way back when, and yet it is also awesome to look back and remember what was. Seeing that Julio Franco batted .341 and had 36 stolen bases in 1991 definitely sent me to Baseball Reference. His .341 won the batting title in ‘91. He had 6.2 WAR that year and 6.8 WAR the year before. Batted over .300 seven times. A somewhat forgotten great player of the 80s and early 90s.
In the 80’s when I collected I had so many cards my mom had trash bags in my closet three of em for each sports full of cards just thrown in. I didn’t care I just dug through the bags and loved it. Crazy how much it’s evolved.
love that you are sharing, i recently found a ken griffey jr "Patch" card that i made when i was 9 by cutting a hole in it and then gluing a pieice of my hat into the card with the mariners logo. I had 2 of the same base cards so i put the full (non cut) one on the back -- it actually looks pretty good lol.
Great stuff, as usual. I love to hear your childhood hobby stories because we grew up in the same era, on opposite sides of the country. A while ago, I found a 100 count box with some interesting cards from my childhood. It mostly contained food related sportscards. I had 2 complete sets & several 3rd & 4th copies of 1990 Score McDonald's baseball. The set was only released in a handful of McDonalds' in Southern Idaho, including the one in my hometown. Being 12 at the time, I LOVED McDonald's and baseball cards, so I got as many as I could. The box also had several 1991-92 Fleer Tony's Pizza basketball cards, including the Jordan! Anyway, this find brought back some fond memories plus unearthed several hundred dollars worth of rare (for the era) sportscards.
Used to play a game with my brother where we would take a random card and do a stat battle. Like, maybe my card was MJ and his was Gary Payton and we would go stat by stat and compare who was better at each category. 1 point per category and we would play several rounds. Kinda like a prior year fantasy matchup. Glad to know there were other card/stat nerds out there 😂
Had a very similar thing going when i was that age; did shows all over the country. My Father was amazing, lost him soon after. Didn't stick with the hobby or the hustle, but I'm happy you did. I always wonder what would have happened if I did. In fairness, you're very good at what you do and not everyone was capable of sticking it through the rough times in the industry. I also live abroad an think it's wild that you did this while living abroad. Much respect. Best to you.
I remember pulling that Team Pinnacle Ripken card from a pack & was so happy, not for the Ripken but because it had my guy Barry Larkin. I cherished that card. Bought an expensive screw down holder and made it the centerpiece of my burgeoning collection. After drifting away from collecting for a few years I came back to the hobby and one of the first things I did was look up what that card was selling for. Back in '92 it was a hot ticket & I was sure it was going to be astronomical now (2005ish). lol Still have it and still think Barry Larkin is criminally underrated.
I pulled that card from a pack too! It marked the beginning of my accidental Ripken PC. My brother and I always pulled big Ripken cards, like we were Ripken magnets, even though we were probably looking for Griffey, Thomas or Piazza at the time.
Thanks Chris.....very informative and a nice listen/watch. A very cool little collection that I did a couple of years ago - players with cards that appeared in Baseball Refference that I shared a birthday with. Was shooting for rookie cards or 1st Bowmans - was able to knock out the list in one day and purchased cards on COMC for 26 of the 28 - the 2 I still haven't picked up are one Hall of Famer and someone from the 1880's - prices are just to high for a tightwad like me. Check it out for some fun.........
Thank you for reminding people scammers have always been in this space. I laugh so hard every time I hear people say the 90’s were innocent. Great video!
Agree! It cracks me up when people talk about the 80s and 90s in general as if there were no crime at all. Like we stayed out until the street lights came on…. Meanwhile today I’m watching so many documentaries of unsolved crimes from back then lol😂
This is awesome!! I love this window into a kid collecting cards in the early 90s. That’s when I was first into the hobby too but I was pretty oblivious to things beyond what a pack of cards cost and what I wanted to spend my little bit of cash on opening (the concept of singles was mostly lost on me too). I was nowhere near as aware of broader trends as you were, nor could I have given any meaningful advice on collecting. Kudos! 🙌🏻
Thanks for sharing the memories. It reminds me of Gary Larsen who owned a card shop in Santa Barbara Picadilly Square. He was the coolest dealer and was always nice to kids, despite being frequently busy with many customers. I'd hang out in his shop for hours daily in the late 80s, with no more than a buck or two in my pocket. I'd sort thousands of cards and he would give me a few packs for my hard work and sometimes buy me lunch.
My collecting has always been mostly baseball as well, to the extent where my brother and I called cards of any other sport “non-sports cards”. I loved this video.
I have a hand drawn catalog from the early 1990's. It was a summer project for my brother and I. We hand designed and collated a mail order catalog for our Costco-sized LCS that we dreamed of opening. Each page had a breakdown of all the main releases and you could order by the case, box, pack or even by the single! I dont remember where it is, but during my last move, I opened it up and marveled at the organization and hand drawn card examples. This is how we filled our time, before the dang ol internet came along.
This was great, Chris. Thanks for letting us see how you were as “Young Chris”. Now we know why you are the Chris that you are now. I still think the binder of cards you drew back then could be reproduced and sold to your fans. 🤔
What started out as a walk down memory lane became a really excellent video about hobby history and perspective. That 13 year old Chris was a sharp kid. And having been a kid at shows in the late 70s and early 80s, I can confirm that many dealers back then were rip off artists. Some not great memories.
Besides being ahead of the curve on advanced baseball stats and card condition shenanigans, you were also leading the trend on asking yourself a question and answering it (why don't I collect Player X? well because I like Cal!). Great points made in this video, both as a 13-year-old and present day.
Man I remember making my own hand drawn (terribly) cards when I was a kid. Don’t think any of them survived the last 30 years, but nice trip down memory lane
Loved this video, Chris. I felt similarly in 1992 about inserts; I collected Will Clark and wanted to get one of every Will Clark card. That dream died in 1992, mostly because Clark had a Donruss Elite insert card which seemed completely impossible to get. That made me lose interest in baseball cards. Of course, after I got back into the hobby in 1999 I picked up that Clark Elite for maybe $10 or $15, and had a different mindset.
This is excellent. Baby El CID with the hobby hot takes! I remember writing in to Beckett Monthly to question/complain about card values and they actually printed it. I'll need to dig out my Young Authors book from when I was in 6th grade, called "Big League Boy" about a 12 year old who - you guessed it - made it to the major league. I certainly wasn't the first kid to fantasize about being in the bigs, but my book's release did precede the movie "Rookie Of the Year", about that kid playing for the Cubs, starring Gary Busey, by about a half decade - so, naturally, I later moved to Hollywood and acted in a film with Gary Busey. Closest I got to achieving my childhood dream of playing for the Red Sox.
I tried to collect every griffey when i was a kid(never had UD rookie until adulthood) but it sucks that it’s no longer possible to even try and collect all your fav players cards. Now people go for topps parallels which is insane to me.
Awesome video, Chris! You were certainly in love with baseball! So creative in your outlets for it back then, too. Good for your parents for encouraging your love for it. I hope the beauty of baseball finds its way into the lives of more and more kids the way it did for any of us who grew up in the 20th century. After Freddie Freeman hit the walk-off salami last night in game 1, my first text was to a buddy that simply read, “Baseball is beautiful.” It wasn’t because the Yankees suffered a devastating defeat (allow that was sweet, too), I sent the text because I was reminded of just how amazing the sport is in that moment. Time stands still in baseball like no other sport. Freddie holding his bat high, rounding the bases, 30k+ fans erupting in jubilation, Freddie runs over and hugs his father, shouts him out for throwing all the BP when he was a kid- you can’t script that stuff any better. I’m a Cleveland fan, so I was supposed to be bitter after my team lost in the LCS. But baseball is different, I tuned in despite my disappointment, it has that power.
This epi was from your Blazer Division! And yeah---13yo you knew that dealers would stoop to covering a card flaw with a price tag...lol... see what I did there?
Thos is great content Chris. You easily could have been a sports caster. Your knowledge, research, and voice would have been right their with Vince Scully, as the voice or a sports radio personality. Excellent video
I’m probably the same age as you, and you could totally get all these stats on the internet at that time. Love your videos, but def needed to chime in on this one.
According to google, less than 1% of people used the internet in 1991 and was used mainly by academics. There were no baseball-stat websites as of 1991. I didn't start using the internet until maybe 1998 or so when we first got it in our home. Even as of 1998 according to google, only 19% of homes had the internet in 1998.
The only thing I dont like about grading is how inconsistent it can be. I wish there is a way to be more consistent because 90% of the time if you send the exact same card into grading(PSA especcially), it would probably come back a different grade each time(regardless if its a half a point or point difference). Oh and of course the up-charge from PSA is pure BS!!
i have a friend who had an autograph of kobe bryant when he lived in italy and was like 10 years old or something, i dont remember his exact age but kobe was a kid and would sign autographs at a basketball court and tell people he was going to play in the nba, he later sold it during kobes nba career, for some reason i thought of that when you were showing the chris sewell rookie card, imagine if you had become like ohtani
Chris; Did you find your razor in that box? One thing I'll disagree with you; there are a lot more thieves and scams now that cards are worth so much...and let us not forget grading card companies like Beckett giving dweet-heart high grading deals to certain high end submitters or PSA refusing to verify a 10 grade they gave to a bogus 1981 Bird Magic card.
Content like this is why I love your channel. It’s all great, but it’s so much fun for me to watch a true baseball and card collecting fan talking about the hobby and their love for it, without any ulterior motive of any kind.
Thanks for the “change of pace”. Great watch and I appreciate both points of view you share
Awesome! You truly have chosen the right career path. Few find something they love when they’re young and can progress at it throughout their life. Young Chris would probably be very happy to see how ‘old’ Chris turned out.
Fred Manrique still feeling that burn.
I started collected Jeff Bagwell cards when he was a rookie and then I continued with the goal of getting every card. That was until 94 (or 95?) when I was in college and got a copy of Beckett and realized just how many inserts/sets there were. And then I stopped.
Also, nice binder full of 1/1s in the beginning. And your baseball photos unlocked a core memory of just high tall they kept the grass in my Little League. Infield really ate up the ground balls.
You were a very smart 13 year old. Lots of early signs of your now expertise and mass respect in the hobby.
Chris Sewall jr. has always been a voice of wisdom for the hobby.
13 year old you was certainly wise beyond his years. The passion was real!
I had to pause and read the whole thing myself. I could hear your squealing voice as I read it. The sassy "NOT" part gave me a good laugh. Your writing style is still much the same. Good stuff Chris!
My mom kept a report I did on Rickey Henderson back in the early 90's. Green and yellow construction paper with magazine cutouts and why he was my favorite player.
It's fun to look back at those old memories.
The first big dollar insert I remember were the 1991 Donruss Elite cards. I remember them being almost impossible to find, though. 1991 Fleer Pro-Visions were also cool and much more affordable.
Good reminder about the dangers and joys of nostalgia. It is never true that things were better way back when, and yet it is also awesome to look back and remember what was.
Seeing that Julio Franco batted .341 and had 36 stolen bases in 1991 definitely sent me to Baseball Reference. His .341 won the batting title in ‘91. He had 6.2 WAR that year and 6.8 WAR the year before. Batted over .300 seven times. A somewhat forgotten great player of the 80s and early 90s.
MVP of the 1990 All Star Game, at a time when names like Puckett, Boggs, Canseco, McGwire and Mattingly ruled the league.
@@nvsportscards7199 Cool! Did not remember that.
In the 80’s when I collected I had so many cards my mom had trash bags in my closet three of em for each sports full of cards just thrown in. I didn’t care I just dug through the bags and loved it. Crazy how much it’s evolved.
love that you are sharing, i recently found a ken griffey jr "Patch" card that i made when i was 9 by cutting a hole in it and then gluing a pieice of my hat into the card with the mariners logo. I had 2 of the same base cards so i put the full (non cut) one on the back -- it actually looks pretty good lol.
Great stuff. I remember having a seller's table at the local Holiday inn card show when I was 12. Man things have changed
Great stuff, as usual. I love to hear your childhood hobby stories because we grew up in the same era, on opposite sides of the country. A while ago, I found a 100 count box with some interesting cards from my childhood. It mostly contained food related sportscards. I had 2 complete sets & several 3rd & 4th copies of 1990 Score McDonald's baseball. The set was only released in a handful of McDonalds' in Southern Idaho, including the one in my hometown. Being 12 at the time, I LOVED McDonald's and baseball cards, so I got as many as I could. The box also had several 1991-92 Fleer Tony's Pizza basketball cards, including the Jordan! Anyway, this find brought back some fond memories plus unearthed several hundred dollars worth of rare (for the era) sportscards.
Dang, those are some super nice finds right there, congrats!
Used to play a game with my brother where we would take a random card and do a stat battle. Like, maybe my card was MJ and his was Gary Payton and we would go stat by stat and compare who was better at each category. 1 point per category and we would play several rounds. Kinda like a prior year fantasy matchup. Glad to know there were other card/stat nerds out there 😂
Had a very similar thing going when i was that age; did shows all over the country. My Father was amazing, lost him soon after. Didn't stick with the hobby or the hustle, but I'm happy you did. I always wonder what would have happened if I did. In fairness, you're very good at what you do and not everyone was capable of sticking it through the rough times in the industry. I also live abroad an think it's wild that you did this while living abroad. Much respect. Best to you.
I remember pulling that Team Pinnacle Ripken card from a pack & was so happy, not for the Ripken but because it had my guy Barry Larkin. I cherished that card. Bought an expensive screw down holder and made it the centerpiece of my burgeoning collection. After drifting away from collecting for a few years I came back to the hobby and one of the first things I did was look up what that card was selling for. Back in '92 it was a hot ticket & I was sure it was going to be astronomical now (2005ish). lol
Still have it and still think Barry Larkin is criminally underrated.
I pulled that card from a pack too! It marked the beginning of my accidental Ripken PC. My brother and I always pulled big Ripken cards, like we were Ripken magnets, even though we were probably looking for Griffey, Thomas or Piazza at the time.
@@nvsportscards7199 Just curious, did you pull it while living in Nevada?
@@nvsportscards7199 I'm not sure if the nv in your name means Nevada but that's where I pulled mine. Sparks.
Thanks Chris.....very informative and a nice listen/watch. A very cool little collection that I did a couple of years ago - players with cards that appeared in Baseball Refference that I shared a birthday with. Was shooting for rookie cards or 1st Bowmans - was able to knock out the list in one day and purchased cards on COMC for 26 of the 28 - the 2 I still haven't picked up are one Hall of Famer and someone from the 1880's - prices are just to high for a tightwad like me. Check it out for some fun.........
Thank you for reminding people scammers have always been in this space. I laugh so hard every time I hear people say the 90’s were innocent. Great video!
Agree! It cracks me up when people talk about the 80s and 90s in general as if there were no crime at all. Like we stayed out until the street lights came on…. Meanwhile today I’m watching so many documentaries of unsolved crimes from back then lol😂
This is awesome!! I love this window into a kid collecting cards in the early 90s. That’s when I was first into the hobby too but I was pretty oblivious to things beyond what a pack of cards cost and what I wanted to spend my little bit of cash on opening (the concept of singles was mostly lost on me too). I was nowhere near as aware of broader trends as you were, nor could I have given any meaningful advice on collecting. Kudos! 🙌🏻
Thanks for sharing the memories. It reminds me of Gary Larsen who owned a card shop in Santa Barbara Picadilly Square. He was the coolest dealer and was always nice to kids, despite being frequently busy with many customers. I'd hang out in his shop for hours daily in the late 80s, with no more than a buck or two in my pocket. I'd sort thousands of cards and he would give me a few packs for my hard work and sometimes buy me lunch.
My collecting has always been mostly baseball as well, to the extent where my brother and I called cards of any other sport “non-sports cards”. I loved this video.
I have a hand drawn catalog from the early 1990's. It was a summer project for my brother and I. We hand designed and collated a mail order catalog for our Costco-sized LCS that we dreamed of opening. Each page had a breakdown of all the main releases and you could order by the case, box, pack or even by the single! I dont remember where it is, but during my last move, I opened it up and marveled at the organization and hand drawn card examples. This is how we filled our time, before the dang ol internet came along.
Great post! I drew a card of myself when I was 11, too, LOL. Still have it.
Great vid! That was my last year of collecting in 1992, so I definitely remember all those expensive inserts haha!!
Crazy how cheap they are now.
This was great, Chris. Thanks for letting us see how you were as “Young Chris”. Now we know why you are the Chris that you are now. I still think the binder of cards you drew back then could be reproduced and sold to your fans. 🤔
What started out as a walk down memory lane became a really excellent video about hobby history and perspective. That 13 year old Chris was a sharp kid. And having been a kid at shows in the late 70s and early 80s, I can confirm that many dealers back then were rip off artists. Some not great memories.
Besides being ahead of the curve on advanced baseball stats and card condition shenanigans, you were also leading the trend on asking yourself a question and answering it (why don't I collect Player X? well because I like Cal!). Great points made in this video, both as a 13-year-old and present day.
Man I remember making my own hand drawn (terribly) cards when I was a kid. Don’t think any of them survived the last 30 years, but nice trip down memory lane
Great video. Thanks for sharing. You're definitely a card collecting savant from an early age
That's cool your dad had you do that, you have great geens
Loved this video, Chris. I felt similarly in 1992 about inserts; I collected Will Clark and wanted to get one of every Will Clark card. That dream died in 1992, mostly because Clark had a Donruss Elite insert card which seemed completely impossible to get. That made me lose interest in baseball cards. Of course, after I got back into the hobby in 1999 I picked up that Clark Elite for maybe $10 or $15, and had a different mindset.
I was thinking that this could have been a part 2 of the last childhood video with the PSA grade reveal
Love the home run picture. Either you have very strong wrists or you were playing at Yankee Stadium
This is excellent. Baby El CID with the hobby hot takes! I remember writing in to Beckett Monthly to question/complain about card values and they actually printed it. I'll need to dig out my Young Authors book from when I was in 6th grade, called "Big League Boy" about a 12 year old who - you guessed it - made it to the major league. I certainly wasn't the first kid to fantasize about being in the bigs, but my book's release did precede the movie "Rookie Of the Year", about that kid playing for the Cubs, starring Gary Busey, by about a half decade - so, naturally, I later moved to Hollywood and acted in a film with Gary Busey. Closest I got to achieving my childhood dream of playing for the Red Sox.
Best hobby channel on TH-cam AND you created the precursor to (WAR), you're a LEGEND!
I tried to collect every griffey when i was a kid(never had UD rookie until adulthood) but it sucks that it’s no longer possible to even try and collect all your fav players cards. Now people go for topps parallels which is insane to me.
Impressive you even knew what a paragraph was at 13 and your philosophy of collecting already smartly determined..
Awesome video, Chris! You were certainly in love with baseball! So creative in your outlets for it back then, too. Good for your parents for encouraging your love for it.
I hope the beauty of baseball finds its way into the lives of more and more kids the way it did for any of us who grew up in the 20th century.
After Freddie Freeman hit the walk-off salami last night in game 1, my first text was to a buddy that simply read, “Baseball is beautiful.” It wasn’t because the Yankees suffered a devastating defeat (allow that was sweet, too), I sent the text because I was reminded of just how amazing the sport is in that moment. Time stands still in baseball like no other sport. Freddie holding his bat high, rounding the bases, 30k+ fans erupting in jubilation, Freddie runs over and hugs his father, shouts him out for throwing all the BP when he was a kid- you can’t script that stuff any better.
I’m a Cleveland fan, so I was supposed to be bitter after my team lost in the LCS. But baseball is different, I tuned in despite my disappointment, it has that power.
Great video. Thanks for sharing.
Awesome, love these personal-leaning vids, Chris. Also, viva Freddie Freeman!
Well put. Kudos
Bust out the tuff stuff with Tyson and holyfield on it before they were supposed to fight in 91 lol
I started collecting in 1981 and I never ran across one dealer that ripped me off
Never understood Strykers popularity. He never collected as a kid like most of us.
Awesome fun times 😂 👍
Seems like you almost found that "Time Machine".
This epi was from your Blazer Division! And yeah---13yo you knew that dealers would stoop to covering a card flaw with a price tag...lol... see what I did there?
Thos is great content Chris. You easily could have been a sports caster. Your knowledge, research, and voice would have been right their with Vince Scully, as the voice or a sports radio personality. Excellent video
You should run your stat algorithm on a recent year and see how it looks. :)
This is awesome.
Loved it!
Good points
The Sunday newspapers provided player stats
What a great video!!! So awesome
That's good stuff....I did similar stuff, only I was really into the stats. I would make up imaginary players with made up stats
I’m probably the same age as you, and you could totally get all these stats on the internet at that time. Love your videos, but def needed to chime in on this one.
According to google, less than 1% of people used the internet in 1991 and was used mainly by academics. There were no baseball-stat websites as of 1991.
I didn't start using the internet until maybe 1998 or so when we first got it in our home. Even as of 1998 according to google, only 19% of homes had the internet in 1998.
Lol no residential internet was being used for baseball stats in 1991. Great video Chris.
@@dominatorbooze8381 me and my 2400bps modem were ahead of the game 😅
The only thing I dont like about grading is how inconsistent it can be. I wish there is a way to be more consistent because 90% of the time if you send the exact same card into grading(PSA especcially), it would probably come back a different grade each time(regardless if its a half a point or point difference). Oh and of course the up-charge from PSA is pure BS!!
I wanted that Cal Pinnacle Rookie Idols, never owned it. 🤥
i have a friend who had an autograph of kobe bryant when he lived in italy and was like 10 years old or something, i dont remember his exact age but kobe was a kid and would sign autographs at a basketball court and tell people he was going to play in the nba, he later sold it during kobes nba career, for some reason i thought of that when you were showing the chris sewell rookie card, imagine if you had become like ohtani
Dude.....u didn't even have Wade Boggs on that 1991 list?😞
My stat was very HR/RBI heavy so Boggs probably didn’t do well :)
Chris;
Did you find your razor in that box?
One thing I'll disagree with you; there are a lot more thieves and scams now that cards are worth so much...and let us not forget grading card companies like Beckett giving dweet-heart high grading deals to certain high end submitters or PSA refusing to verify a 10 grade they gave to a bogus 1981 Bird Magic card.
❤❤❤
I think you owe Fred Manrique an apology.
I collected all the PED losers that will never make the HOF
This is an awesome video!
Did u submit any to PSA?
First.🎉😊
We have a winner!
Thank you, I WILL eat my vegetables. 👍🥔🥕🥬🥦